Never the Same
by T.S. Blue
Summary: He had been warned that things would never be the same...  Rated T for language and some content.


_This rude little bugger wouldn't leave me alone, interrupting me as I tried to work on something more substantial. So here it is._

_Thanks to everyone who has been reading all these droplets of stories, and special thanks to those who take the time to review. And for those who have stuck with me through a few stories now, well - you know how I feel about miners, so - let's hope together that the tragedy in Utah doesn't continue to get more tragic._

_Don't own them, don't earn a dime..._

_Cheers!_

* * *

The waning moon was a deep orange on the night that Luke learned about Loopy Lenny. The man's real name hardly mattered. Out here you either dealt in rank, surname, or the name your bunkmates branded you with. Most of the time, Luke was known simply as "Georgia," though some of his closer buddies had more colorful names that they'd use on him from time to time. 

Loopy Lenny was a corporal that was assigned to Luke's platoon about five months after the oldest Duke cousin had been assigned there himself. And on Loopy's third day, the men who'd been there awhile got bored with the customary silent treatment bestowed on anyone new, and began to push him for his background. Of course, at that point he wasn't yet known as Loopy, just Corporal Lennard.

"So," DiSalvo, the company loudmouth, began the interrogation. "What brings you out to this charming resort known as Vietnam?"

"Been here before," the corporal said with a shrug, as if that sentence even made sense.

"Not here," Red, who was so named for his flaming hair and the color his skin turned over the course of a day in the jungle, commented. "Not with us."

"Nope, not right here exactly, but I did a previous tour in 'Nam."

"Oh, so you just extended your stay a little. The government thanks you for your loyalty," Razz used his main weapon, sarcasm, on the new guy, who wasn't so new after all.

"Naw, I was home for awhile. I came back."

Luke, who until this time had been listening with half an ear, while writing a letter to his cousin Bo, began to pay attention.

"You went home? You were what, discharged? And you re-upped?" DiSalvo was incredulous. "Is that what you're telling us?"

"That's what I'm saying," the man who was just about to be dubbed Loopy Lenny replied. From that point on, the silent treatment resumed. No one wanted to get too close to Loopy, in case whatever was wrong with his brain rubbed off on the rest of them.

Not long afterward, Luke found himself alone with Loopy on latrine duty. Every time they moved camp, they had to dig new ones, and every time, most of the men on shovel duty complained. Luke Duke just dug in. "Georgia" was used to heavy work.

"Where you from, Lennard?" the Duke boy asked, conversationally. Luke knew truly insane men, those who'd lived alone in the mountains for too long, and others who'd drunk contaminated 'shine. This Lennard, he didn't qualify as insane, maybe just weird.

"Macon."

"Macon, _Georgia_?"

"You catch on quick, Farmboy." Another of Luke's nicknames.

"You got family there?"

"Two brothers and a sister, plus my parents, and now a couple of little nephews."

Now Luke was starting to think that maybe the rest of the guys in his platoon were right about old Loopy.

"If you had a chance to be out of this place, and be back home with your family, what the hell are you doing here?"

Loopy stilled his shovel and stared at Luke, hard.

"I'm gonna do you a favor, Farmboy. I'm gonna tell you like it is, from one Georgian to another."

Luke stopped digging as well, tensing his muscles in case Lenny was looking for a fight. You never could tell what might make someone blow, and Luke was starting to think that Loopy was a lit stick of dynamite.

"You go back there, and _there_ ain't there no more," he said simply.

Luke tried to make sense of these words.

"What ain't there?"

"It ain't the way you left it. You've changed. Your kin have changed. Ain't nothing like it was. One or t'other of you has gone crazy, and you don't understand each other no more. It's like you don't even know the same language."

"Aw, it can't be that bad. Why, I bet you didn't give it enough time," Luke said, more to comfort himself than his cohort.

"Duke, I ain't gonna argue with you. But when you go home, you'll see. There ain't no more room for you at the inn. They all went on with their lives without you. And you won't know how to talk to them anymore. Never mind, man. You'll see. Things are never the same again."

"Duke! Lennard! I see tongues flapping in the breeze! Those shovels ain't chin rests! Get back at it, and keep them tongues where they belong, in your own mouths." Luke was actually relieved at the sergeant's bark.

Luke never had another conversation with Loopy Lenny, but not because he avoided the man like the rest of the guys. No, it was more because Loopy didn't last a lot longer. Within two weeks, Corporal Lennard lost his opportunity to try going home once more, when a sniper caught him out in the open, seemingly oblivious. Luke was one of the men who retrieved his body. When they turned him over, the dead man was smiling.

* * *

Bo Duke had a unique way of dealing with know-it-all classmates. Unlike his oldest cousin, the teenager wasn't known for his brains, but it hardly mattered. He didn't take any guff either, and those who thought they were smarter than him would often find themselves at a loss for words when the blonde graced them with his most charming smile and thanked them for their information. They were never sure if they were being appreciated or mocked. 

"So," Dave, a football teammate that was a couple of years older than Bo remarked, "Luke's in Vietnam, huh?"

This wasn't news. Everyone in Hazzard pretty much knew everything about everyone else in the small, Appalachian town. Bo looked at his teammate warily. A lot of people didn't approve of the war, and in truth, the youngest Duke cousin was one of them. But there were those who blamed the soldiers for the war, and if Dave was one of those, Bo was likely to go home with bruised knuckles tonight.

"You know, them guys, even if they do make it home alive… they ain't never the same. Look at John Durnell. Used to be a member of this football team, just like your cousin. Now he's a raving lunatic."

Bo showed the other boy his teeth in what Dave mistook for a smile, though the Duke boy was actually gritting his molars for all he was worth.

"Thanks a lot, Dave, I'll remember that."

And fortunately he was able to go home without engaging in the fight that had desperately wanted to happen. He completed his chores quickly, and after dinner he managed to get his homework done early enough to allow him a little time to himself before bed. Sitting on the lowest branch of his favorite oak, he watched the reddish moon rise as he thought of Luke.

The Durnell boy was not exactly a raving lunatic, but he was not the same boy that left Hazzard two and a half years ago. He was reclusive, jumpy, snappish, angry. Luke would be none of these things. Bo swore to himself, as he gave the now fully risen moon one more glance, that Luke would be the same boy that left here, even if the blonde had to force him to be.

* * *

As he sat on his bed looking out the window for the fourth night in a row, Luke knew he would never be the same. That's how long he had been home, four days. His family had been all over him from the time they'd met him at the bus. They weren't the same, either. Bo was too tall, Daisy too sexy, Jesse by far too old. But their affection for each other and the soldier they had missed had not changed in the years he'd been away. They loved him, and they wanted to know everything he'd done since leaving them, as if he'd been at some kind of sleep away camp or something. 

He wasn't going to tell them a thing. And he wasn't going to let them get too close either, or he might slip up and start talking. Heck, he'd spent every night since he'd been home watching the moon rise and set over Hazzard, so that he wouldn't talk in his sleep. Not that he could sleep anymore.

Nothing was the same, just as Loopy Lenny had promised him a couple of lifetimes ago, back when he was just a kid, for crying out loud! He hadn't known then just how right Lenny could be, how much he would change. He thought he knew everything by then, having seen five months of war. But there was so much more to see…

The war was, for all intents and purposes, over now. Luke was one of the last to leave. There was no war to go back to, though he supposed he could re-up for another hitch in the Marines all the same. But despite the look of peace on Lennard's face when they had turned his dead body over, Luke was not going to buy into the corporal's belief system. He would find a way to stay here, in Hazzard, even if nothing was ever the same.

His cousin turned in his sleep, drawing Luke's attention leftward. The youngster was, as he had always been, an angel when he slept. Though he knew the younger boy was not exactly innocent when he was awake, Luke refused to be a part of that, swore he wouldn't taint Bo further. His baby cousin should stay as naïve as possible.

* * *

"Moonshine." With a headshake, the younger boy continued plaintively, "Why couldn't our family run firewood or asparagus or something?" 

If they hadn't been in such a serious situation, if he hadn't known how badly Bo was hurting, Luke would have laughed. What, exactly, would running asparagus be like?

The family had engaged in the illegal practice of making and delivering moonshine for more than 200 years, and it had taken until tonight for things to go really wrong. This was supposed to be the best night of Bo's life, his first run, a Duke coming-of-age ritual. But it had ended in this jail cell, with both of them locked up, and Bo suffering from a concussion, to boot.

"I'm sorry, Luke," the blonde said for what might have been the millionth time that night.

"It'll be all right," his cousin echoed, making it one million and one times that he'd comforted the younger boy that way.

"We're going to prison, ain't we." It wasn't even a question, just sorrow finding its way out of the blonde's heart through words. "Nothing's ever gonna be the same."

* * *

The boys sat on the back porch watching fireflies. They hadn't said anything in awhile, but they'd talked out all there was to talk out. Their uncle had gotten them out of a prison sentence by swearing that the family would give up its history, its sole source of income. The boys hated that the old man had been forced to do that. But it would preserve the family unit, and for that they were grateful. 

So, as they sat in companionable silence, Bo draped his arm lightly across Luke's shoulders, glad to have his cousin beside him.

Luke watched the moon struggle to find its way out from behind a cloud, focusing on the bright rim that its light created. The Dukes had no income. They had no legally marketable skills, either. Nothing would ever be the same. But everything would be all right, because he was here, with his family, where he belonged, the only place he wanted to be.


End file.
